Pakistan has no alternative but to surgically eliminate its bonds with jihadi groups, cleanse its security establishments of jihadi patrons and focus on rebuilding the State on democratic lines, says Brigadier S K Chatterji (retd).
Highest levels of Pakistan's security apparatus, including army chief General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, might have been aware of the plot to bomb the Indian embassy in Kabul in July, United States intelligence and security officials believe, a media report has said.They also believe that the attack was aided by Pakistan's infamous Inter Services Intelligence agency."It's very difficult to imagine he (General Kayani) was not aware," a senior American official said.
India has a new headache on hand: Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence directing the Taliban to join them in their Kashmir battle. According to reports in the Intelligence Bureau, the fight for Kashmir will get even more intense with the Taliban agreeing to join the ISI in this fight.
Vicky Nanjappa digs a bit deeper to unearth a few more angles in the fake currency menace creating havoc in India.
Coming under 'immense pressure' from the defence establishments, the Pakistan government has withdrawn its decision to place the Inter Services Intelligence under civilian control, leading newspapers reported on Monday.Less than 24 hours after moving to clip the wings of the Inter-Services Intelligence, the government issued a clarification stating that its earlier notification that the body had been placed under direct control of the Interior Ministry was 'misunderstood.'
Peeved over the silence of leaders of separatist groups, their factions in Pakistan and in occupied-Kashmir are making desperate attempts to foment trouble in Jammu and Kashmir by giving calls from across the border for 'bandhs' and strikes to mark the death anniversary of Mirwaiz Farooq and Abdul Gani Lone, officials said.
Managing the senior generals has proven to be quite a headache for General Asim Munir, even as he and his team of loyal henchmen labour hard to dispel the sense of unhappiness among the public about the army's overbearing presence and interference in matters 'civilian', notes Rana Banerji, who headed the Pakistan desk at RA&W.
United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has said that Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari is a good partner in war against terrorism, even as Pakistan military or the Inter-Services Intelligence, according to her, have maintained relationship with terrorist groups for decades.
Radical preacher Amritpal Singh, who is on the run following a police crackdown, has been maintaining close links with Pakistani intelligence agency Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and some terrorist groups based abroad, official sources said on Saturday.
Pakistan is directly helping the Taliban in their fight against the elected government in war-ravaged Afghanistan, a media report said, citing a secret North Atlantic Treaty Organisation document.
Rediff.com's Vicky Nanjappa travels to Bhatkal on Karnataka's west coast to investigate how a quaint town turned into a hotspot. Bhatkal has been in the news since the Indian security agencies zeroed in on terror links to this town.
In an informal chat, former Intelligence Bureau chief Ajit Doval tells Onkar Singh that Osama Bin Laden's death must have come as a blow to Al Queda. "But if you ask me whether the Islamic radicalism has been badly hit, I would say no."
Pakistan is abuzz with rumours that the country's all-powerful military may topple the fragile government in Islamabad within next 48 hours.
The press briefing seemed a deliberate decision to let the army convey its angst to Imran directly, observes Rana Banerji, who headed the Pakistan desk at RAW, India's external intelligence agency.
The government has given its sanction to charge sheet nine people including Pakistani-American terrorist David Headley, Lashkar-e-Tayiba founder Hafiz Saeed and two Inter Services Intelligence officers for plotting terror attacks in India including the 26/11 strikes.
A military official representing the defence ministry told a three-judge bench headed by Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry that no political cell was operating in the ISI.
Of all the homegrown outfits that the Inter-Service Intelligence has created in India, they have found the Indian Mujahideen to be most effective, reports Vicky Nanjappa.
Pro-Khalistan elements based in Canada have been luring gullible Sikh youth to the North American country by sponsoring their visa with the sole objective of using them to carry out their agenda on Canadian soil, sources said on Wednesday.
Pakistan's powerful spy agency Inter Services Intelligence regards the United States as its "worst enemy" and Islamabad's claim that it is cooperating with Washington is a sham to extract billions of dollars in aid, jailed Pakistani doctor Shakeel Afridi who helped the CIA trace Osama bin Laden has said.
The ball is in the Central Intelligence Agency's court if it wants to take its relationship with the Inter-Services Intelligence agency back to the level it was prior to the arrest of United States security contractor Raymond Davis for gunning down two Pakistani men, according to a media report.
Security around senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader L K Advani and Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi was reviewed on Tuesday following intelligence inputs that global terrorist Dawood Ibrahim has been asked by Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence to assassinate them.
While the Indian government has blamed Pakistan for morphing images and spreading them to create panic among the members of the northeastern community, the other side to this story is quite alarming. Vicky Nanjappa reports.
The immediate problem that the Lashkar faces following the crackdown is the supply of arms and other materials to carry out terror strikes. Dawood Ibrahim has been asked to use his existing smuggling channels to send in arms and ammunition.
The SSP said the investigation of the matter and questioning of the infiltrator will be conducted later.
'Many in Pakistan were thinking about taking Saeed from the Lashkar-e-Tayiba and making him the pole around which they would bring in and demilitarise militants and turn them into a political entity in Pakistan.'
Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence-sponsored Haqqani Network, responsible for the killings of United States and coalition troops in Afghanistan and widely believed to have been responsible for the bombing of the Indian embassy in Kabul a few years ago, is on the verge of being designated a Foreign Terrorist Organisation.
The Pakistani judicial commission investigating the killing of Osama bin Laden has interviewed the al Qaeda leader's widows and daughters for the first time, the panel announced on Wednesday.
The judicial commission probing the killing of Osama bin Laden has recorded the statements of Inter-Services Intelligence officials, who reiterated claims that the US unilaterally conducted the raid against the Al Qaeda leader without the consent of Pakistani authorities.
The Pentagon on Tuesday said it had shared with Pakistan in recent years the indications of Islamabad's "complicity" with extremist groups, renewing top United States commander Admiral Mike Mullen's allegations that Inter-Services Intelligence was conniving with the Haqqani network in Afghanistan.
Pakistan Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani on Saturday rejected American accusations linking Pakistan's spy agency Inter Services Intelligence with the Haqqani terror network, saying the allegations reflected "policy disarray" within the United States administration on achieving peace in Afghanistan.
The already tense relations between the United States and Pakistan further deteriorated when Admiral Mike Mullen on Thursday accused the Inter-Services Intelligence agency for supporting the Haqqani network in planning and executing an assault on the US embassy in Afghanistan.
Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the United States joint chiefs of staff, just days before his retirement, has made yet another scathing indictment of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence's perfidy. The spy agency maintains proxies like the Haqqani network for its own strategic depth in Afghanistan, he said.
Such action will be seriously detrimental to national security and should be opposed by public and political opinion, says B Raman
Pakistan Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani today said the ISI has given its "feedback" to India on "some information" about the Mumbai attacks that New Delhi had shared with US intelligence agency CIA.
On a day when Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said the Mumbai attacks could not have been carried out without the support of official agencies in Pakistan, Intelligence Bureau sources told rediff.com that the Inter-Services Intelligence agency had detailed knowledge about the planning and execution of the November 26 attacks in Mumbai. No terror operation in India is a success unless it is backed by the ISI, the sources added.
A lieutenant colonel is facing charges of establishing unauthorised contacts on Facebook with a Bangladeshi woman, suspected to be an Inter Services Intelligence agent, who had earlier honeytrapped an Indian officer in Dhaka last year.
Sources suggest that in the days to come, Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence would position Dawood and Ilyas in such a way that they would contribute the worst forms of terror.
Investigative journalist Wayne Madsen reported that according to intelligence sources, Ibrahim is a CIA asset, both as a veteran of the mujahedeen war and in a continuing connection with his casino and drug trade operations in Kathmandu.
Investigating agencies claim that the amount of fake currency in India is a shocking Rs 170,000 crore. Reserve Bank of India officials dispute this figure and say that as on July 2008, the total currency available with the Indian public was Rs 603,000 crore and if what the IB is saying is true, then it would mean that 28 per cent of the currency in the country is fake.